First Trailer
Looks like we're getting the Fall of Reach. When the show first started, I expected that to be the big season one finale, but the show mixed things up a lot with laying out its version of the universe. I thought that was interesting, but it was, and remains, profoundly tedious to see the negative reaction in Halo fan spaces to every slight alteration from the existing story (I wish that vehemence had been present when the original Halo tie-in novel threw out every plan and implication from Bungie in the original game about the backstory; oh, now you hate that the Spartans were brainwashed child-soldiers commissioned to murder political dissidents on Earth colonies, maybe you should've registered your displeasure back when it would've made a difference, in 2001).
As someone who started with the show as my introduction to the franchise, the online Halo fans put me off trying the games for a very long time. They just seemed so negative about everything. Once I played the games I did understand some of the criticisms of the changes, but I also don't think a 1:1 adaptation would work as well as they think it would.I thought that was interesting, but it was, and remains, profoundly tedious to see the negative reaction in Halo fan spaces to every slight alteration from the existing story
I mean, it is shooting things so cannons are involvedIt's not cannon, so
The Halo games did it, The Mandalorian did it fine.
And, yes it is canon, but it is an adaptation which will involve changes. It will not be like the video game, with a nearly blank slate for a character fir the player to get their wish fulfillment out of.
Yes, thank you for making that clear distinction.I mean, it's canon to itself, but it's explicitly set in a difference version of the universe than everything else, called the Silver Timeline. It's kind of moot until we see the first tie-ins directly with the series, novels or comics or what-have-you set in the Silver Timeline instead of the game version, but it's definitely an official thing that there are two separate and distinct Halo continuities going on.
Of course, Halos 1, 2, 4, and 5 all began or ended with the Chief helmetless (honorable mention to "Reach" doing it at both ends with its protagonist). It's not a religious thing, it's not even an in-universe thing, in non-visual media, he walks around like a normal person all the time (and even the visual depictions have been gradually pushing the line back on how old John can be before we stop seeing his face). It's an affectation within the games that the audience (and the audience alone) never sees his face, that only works because they're mainly in the first-person and mainly set when he's on-duty. It was pretty much a dead issue from day one, Bungie clearly wanted the Master Chief to be a nameless, faceless vessel for the player, like his spiritual ancestor, the Security Officer from Marathon, or his to-the-extreme descendent, Noble Six, but that went out the window when Microsoft demanded a prequel tie-in novel that gave him a name, a physical description, and a life story regardless of any plans the actual developers had, and the book sold well enough it couldn't just be ignored. Once that happened, you may as well show the man's face, you've given away everything else about him.
It's already wacky when Chief is standing around with a bunch of other Spartans and he's the only one wearing his helmet, it would've been so much worse trying to write around it in the show. You'd either have to make it an actual in-universe thing that he refuses to show his face, have him in full gear all the time even when it makes no sense, or make it into a joke where his face is always out of frame or hidden ("Halo: The Series," starring Wilson from "Home Improvement" and the the tall guy from "Police Squad!").
I think they made the right choice getting it out of the way early on the show. I even like how they leaned into it metafictionally, with using nudity versus armor as a symbol and metaphor, even though most of the audience just took it as "Lawl, buttz."
I mean, it's canon to itself, but it's explicitly set in a different version of the universe than everything else, called the Silver Timeline. It's kind of moot until we see the first tie-ins directly with the series, novels or comics or what-have-you set in the Silver Timeline instead of the game version, but it's definitely an official thing that there are two separate and distinct Halo continuities going on.
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